JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #83 - August/September 2013 - 40

Canada: country guest of honor

Winnipeg is fast becoming a global
composite manufacturing centre

By
Simon Potter
Product Innovation & Civil
Infrastructure Manager, CIC Manitoba Inc.
Ms. Karen Debroni, Business Development
Professionnal, Yes! Winnipeg

Geographically located in the centre of North America and
nestled at the heart of two converging rivers, Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada has long been a meeting place and centre
for commerce. With its solid underlying value proposition
for business in general, an abundance of institutional and
natural composite resources and a singular combination of
large aerospace, ground transportation, agricultural and
other machinery industry end users, Winnipeg is a city that
demands to be on the radar of composite business and research professionals worldwide.

- Airbus’s A350 airplane expected to launch
in 2014.

O

n a global scale, the composite industry is enjoying a sustained increase
in market expansion, and this is
predicted to continuously grow.
Driving forces include the increasing demand for low-weight, fuel-efficient vehicles
with reduced emissions, a growing population requiring new infrastructure and urbanization, the green movement promoting
the use of green materials in manufacturing
and construction, a continued industrial
focus on innovation, and the reduction
(especially considering advances in carbon
fibre production methods and the introduction of natural materials) in composite
material costs. Tangible examples illustrating this growth include:
- the fully-composite Boeing 787 airframe
currently in production;
- Mercedes’ SLR McLaren sports car being
introduced in production in 2013 with a
fully-composite automotive carbon-fibre
frame, crash structures and body panels;
and

From a global perspective, in 2010, the
composite industry comprised 550,000
employees, shipped 8 million tons of
materials and created industry sales of $83
billion (Canadian dollars). Sixteen per cent
or $13.3 billion of this industry is in North
America. It is predicted that from 2010 to
2016, growth will be at an 8% compound
annual growth rate (CAGR).

Why Winnipeg?
«Thus the greatness of our city brings it about
that all the good things from all over the world
flow in to us». Pericles of Athens, 431 BC.
As a key contributor to this global success,
Winnipeg is rapidly becoming recognised as
the centre for composite development and
innovation in North America. Over the past
decade, the city has seen:
- over 500 jobs created at Boeing Winnipeg
with a recognized design authority to certify
airworthiness of products;
- a new 130,000 square foot (12,000 square
metre) composite facility built at Magellan
Aerospace;

40 jec composites magazine / No83 August - September 2013

- Structural Composite Technologies’ new
state-of-the-art facility built;
- four new businesses established including
a new green field composite fabricator, the
Eastside Group of Companies;
- EMTEQ and Cormer Aerospace implement new composite manufacturing
capabilities; and
- itself become Canada’s largest composite
technology centre through the Composites
Innovation Centre (CIC).
None of the above developments have
occurred by accident. Rather, they are the
result of a concerted effort within Winnipeg
to develop a composite industry cluster
encompassing an array of companies, institutions and government agencies working
together to take advantage of the region’s
natural strengths to achieve competitive and
technological advances through accelerated innovation. This process commenced
in 2003 after a comprehensive analysis
of Winnipeg’s industrial sector strengths
concluded that the city was ideally suited
for the development of a composites and
advanced materials cluster. The analysis
found that all of the foundational elements
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #83 - August/September 2013

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